NAME GAME MEANS BIG BUSINESS FOR CORPORATE IMAGERS

Eliot Kleinberg, Dallas Morning NewsCHICAGO TRIBUNE

It is a secret team of sharp minds and pencils. Its members, in most cases, neither work with nor even know each other. They were brought together through an advertisement next to a newspaper`s crossword puzzle. When their work is through, the results could appear in neon, on billboards and in newspaper advertisements.

Such teams are part of a high-stakes fight for public familiarity. Banks and other corporations are spending fortunes on image-strengthening campaigns, and sometimes that includes a new identity.

If it does, companies often call Stan Richards, 52, chief of the Richards Group, father of such names as MBank, the Paragon Group, Plaza of the Americas and City Place, and beneficiary of the secret teams` work. Richards explains how those came to be:

''Some years ago we began to occasionally run ads, to try to find people who really love to play with words. So we have a long list of people that we can call in, give them the guidelines on name development, tell them as much about the company as they need to know, tell them what the aspirations of the company are, what are the problems.

''They work at it stream-of-consciousness style,'' says Lee Ballard, who oversees this creative pool. ''Each word you put down triggers the next one, and all of a sudden, you run out of ideas; so you grab for anything; a telephone directory, a magazine, anything that has words in it.''

Ballard, part of the Richards creative staff of 55, was a linguist for 15 years. In two years with Richards he has named or renamed 50 to 75 companies and products. The biggest clients are real estate developers, holding companies and publications.

His talent pool of about 30--including 10 on his ''A-team''--includes homemakers, a news writer, an advertising executive, a ceramics artist and at least one television actress.

The name players earn about $50 for their efforts, more if their suggestions make the list presented to the client. If a suggestion is the eventual choice, there`s a bonus. Ballard says that has only happened once. It was a new name; a secretary produced Chase Oaks for a development in North Dallas.

California, New York, Florida and Texas led the nation in name changes in 1984, and California, New York, Minnesota and Texas were the leaders in 1983, according to Joel Portugal, of Anspach Grossman Portugal, in New York. The firm is considered one of the nation`s top ''corporate identity'' consultants, with company names making up about 90 percent of its business.

Portugal says more name changes involve banking than any other business, mostly because banks no longer deal strictly with local markets.

''Twenty-five, 40 years ago,'' he says, ''there wasn`t interstate banking. They didn`t need a name that they could take across the country.''

The single biggest reason for change is mergers. Such was the case when Texas Federal Savings and Loan and Trinity Savings and Loan merged in 1984. Chairman H.R. (Bum) Bright and the other officers decided neither name suited the new entity. Texas Federal`s Joel Williams had a great suggestion: Bright Banc. It was vetoed by Bum Bright.

In May, Landor Associates, a consulting firm, was hired to come up with another name. The firm agreed with officials who thought Bright Banc was a workable choice but started research on other possibilities. Two months later Landor produced a list of finalists, including StarBank, Great States and Investar. Landor`s top recommendation: AmeriStar. The star concept came with a fancy star-shaped logo, an unusual red and gray color scheme, a unique type style.

A great deal of head-scratching followed. Then someone had an idea, an old one.

''The more we thought about it (Bright Banc), the more we liked it,''

Jameson says.

Besides the obvious Bum Bright connection, Jameson says that everyone likes the name`s upbeat connotation, and it is compatible with the star logo they had paid so much for.

How much? The name search cost $25,000, an expense Jameson says was justified.

''Sometimes, you have to go all the way around the house to find that`s what you really wanted in the first place,'' he says.

Another banking institution found a new identity hidden in the old one

--Mercantile Bank.

''It was a great old name,'' says vice president David Gravelle, ''but we didn`t feel it could carry us into the future.'' He says it didn`t have

''enough marketing schmaltz, if you will, to carry it forward.''

Gravelle says the itch to change names came three years ago, about a year before Mercantile merged with Houston`s Bank of the Southwest. Two postmerger working names were thrown out: Mercantile Southwest Corp. and MSW. Neither appealed to officials who wanted a single, strong name for the new union.

The era of national and international banking looming on the horizon added to the problem. There were Mercantile Banks in four major states; also, the word had a different meaning in Europe, connoting strong govermental economic control.

So Mercantile turned to the agency it had used for eight years, the Richards Group. Some 20 staffers labored for 16 months, coming up with 1,500 suggestions. Like Bright Banc, one name suggested early on was returned to.

What gave the suggested name an advantage was something Mercantile already had: its seven-year-old Momentum advertising campaign of fluid images, a slashing M shaped like a growth chart, a bold type style.

''We knew one thing,'' Richards says. ''We had the most successful bank advertising campaign in America, and we weren`t about to walk away from Momentum.''

The new name: MBank. The cost: $8.7 million, including $650,000 for creative work, $3.1 million to advertise the new name, $4 million for signs and $1 million for miscellaneous expenses such as brochures.

Gravelle says it was all worth it. The magic M lets the corporation do what McDonalds has done with Mac--McNuggets, Big Mac and so on. The holding company became MCorp, the trust subsidiary MTrust, the data processing branch MTech and the automatic teller system MPACT.

The all-time champion of name changes must be Exxon.

The energy giant spent an estimated $100 million in the 1970s to overcome finally what had been a 60-year identity crisis.

In 1911 the United States Supreme Court broke Standard Oil into 34 different companies. In 1923, Standard of New Jersey began using the name Esso. But the other former corporate siblings charged that it was too confusing--Esso, S.O., Standard Oil.

The courts agreed; Esso was banned in 20 states, and Standard of New Jersey called itself Enco, for Energy Co.

In 1966 a New York firm was given a mission: Come up with a new, unifying name. The firm turned to a most logical assistant: a computer. It was given certain parameters--4-and 5-letter combinations compatible with Enco and Esso --and it spit out 10,000 suggestions, some gibberish, about 200 good enough to make the next cut. Twelve qualified for the final list.

Those dozen included Enco again, and EnJay.

After five years of research, one of the computer`s suggestions--Exxon

--got the go-ahead. Another two years of test marketing followed.

''People said it sounded like an oil company,'' says Exxon`s Blue Beathard in Houston. That clinched it.

On Jan. 1, 1973, the company officially became Exxon. Lettering had to be changed on oil tankers, stationery, 25,000 service stations and millions of credit cards.

But before the change Exxon was checked out in 55 of the world`s principal languages.

The firm didn`t want to repeat the embarrassment it suffered after learning that Enco in Japanese translates roughly to ''stalled car.''

Richards, of the Richards Group, says any name change can backfire but almost never does--and won`t, if the agency does its job. The trick, he says, is to find something that won`t die with last year`s fashions.

''The first names that go out are the trendy names, and there are a lot. We`re talking about a label that`s going to be attached to a company for 40, 50 years.''

Many corporations simply reduce themselves to their initials. But Richards says there are problems with the ''alphabet soup'' concept; after a while, people forget what the initials stand for.

But that`s exactly what LTV did. By 1970, Jim Ling`s electronics store had expanded to the massive Ling-Temco-Vought Corp. It needed a name to reflect its new status.

Landor Associates, the same team who would have brought you AmeriStar, was paid $50,000 to create a new name. After six months the firm came back with a new logo and a list of names, including LTV.

Spokesman John Johnson says it finally was conceded that the public already had forced LTV on the corporation: ''They would wind up calling us LTV (anyway) unless we changed our name to Consolidated Group Dynamics or something.''

Johnson says that although the firm is pleased with its name, he wishes there were a simpler way to find one.

''There`s no ideal solution to the name-change thing, believe me,'' he says.